


Take Any Form

by verdant_fire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Ghosts, Halloween, M/M, Post The Great Game, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdant_fire/pseuds/verdant_fire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John is dead.</p><p>No.  No, that’s not right.  Perhaps it’s Sherlock who is dead.  He can’t quite keep that straight, anymore.</p><p>Either way, Sherlock is in hell."</p><p>A ghost story, of sorts, for Halloween.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Any Form

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! I wanted to write something creepy for the holiday. This has been updated slightly from the original version. Title from _Wuthering Heights_ , and my thanks to [ennta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ennta/pseuds/ennta) for the hand-holding. Please see the end notes for (somewhat spoilery) warnings.

John is dead.

No. No, that’s not right. Perhaps it’s Sherlock who is dead. He can’t quite keep that straight, anymore.

Either way, Sherlock is in hell.

//

It starts after the pool, after Moriarty promises to burn the heart out of him. Sherlock remembers it in mirror-bright flashes: John’s eyes on his, scared but steady and so brave, as John rendered his own life forfeit. John kept looking at him with solemn trust, even as Sherlock’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Afterwards, John stays away from the flat. He doesn’t answer texts or even phone calls, once Sherlock resorts to the latter. Sherlock considers following him, but opts to wait, since Sherlock is not worried. Obviously. There will be some rational—or perhaps irrational—explanation for why John is gone. He is certainly not hurt, or in danger, or—well. He’s not. So, in his absence, Sherlock performs every messy and malodourous experiment he can think of, purposely leaves human remains in the refrigerator drawer, and goes through a pack and a half of cigarettes out of spite, because if John is going to desert him then Sherlock is damn well going to smoke.

It’s all disturbingly dull. The only interruption in the tedium is Mrs Hudson, who comes up to check on him quite often, and always looks so sad that he suspects one of her geriatric friends has died. She does make him tea, though, so he lets his mind move on to more pressing matters, like where John could have got to and why he hasn’t come back.

Sherlock just wants John to come back.

//

Three nights later, John does.

Sherlock wakes, breathing hard, from a nightmare of the pool, and immediately wonders if he’s still dreaming. John is there, perched on the edge of his bed, but he looks … different. In the dim light from the street, Sherlock can see that John’s hair is stubbornly mussed, and the front of his jumper is torn and dirty. Sherlock reaches for him without thinking, tries to flatten his palms against John’s chest to search for a heartbeat.

John shies away from his hands, but smiles at him all the same, just out of reach.

“John,” he gasps, “John, are you all right?”

“Would you like to check, Sherlock?” John asks, softly, as if Sherlock were an animal in need of taming. “Make sure that I’m all in one piece, with my insides in order? I know you’ve wondered if I’m truly like everyone else. You could trace all my veins and synapses, try to figure out what made me this way. Would that help?”

Sherlock’s mouth is dry. He _has_ wondered, though not in any way he’d ever act upon, whether John was special in any tangible, empirical way, any way that would explain why he was so endlessly fascinating when the rest of humanity was so irredeemably boring. But now John has offered, and it’s possible that this is still a dream, so looking can’t do any harm. Can it? No. Maybe. Probably not.

Sherlock nods a yes at John, one small dip of his chin. John smiles again, all teeth.

“Lovely. But you have to do something for me first, Sherlock. Will you do something for me? I want to see what you look like too, inside. Will you show me? It’ll only sting for a second; I’ll show you where to cut. I’m a doctor, I won’t hurt you.”

John has never hurt him. Sherlock gives his assent.

John covers Sherlock’s right hand— _the one with the scalpel in it, where had that come from?_ —with his left and lifts them both to Sherlock’s chest, just over his heart. Sherlock takes a shuddering breath and makes a diagonal incision through his pectoral muscle. He peels back the flesh so that John can see inside, through the ribs, to Sherlock’s heart, which is still beating, off-rhythm and out of time. It hurts, but the look on John’s face, intent and greedy and fascinated, blots out the pain.

John reaches delicately between the fourth and fifth ribs with his index finger and touches Sherlock’s left ventricle. Sherlock’s whole body jerks. John’s hands are cold.

John’s eyes turn hard. “It’s mine now,” he says, “all of it. What would you do, to have me back again?”

“Anything,” Sherlock breathes, and knows it for the truth as soon as he’s said it.

For a man like Sherlock Holmes, ‘anything’ is a very broad promise indeed.

//

In the morning, John is still there, sitting in his chair. He has not made tea. He does not mention last night. Sherlock studies him, trying to brand him onto his memory.

This John, this new version of John, is just ever so slightly wrong, like a skilfully forged sculpture. His hair hasn’t been combed, and he hasn’t changed out of the torn, dirty jumper. His eyes are the exact colour of the water in the pool, blue as Cerenkov radiation.

Sherlock could drown in those eyes.

What’s more, he wants to.

//

The first body, that of one of Moriarty’s snipers, is found on a Tuesday. Sherlock is called in to look at it, crumpled up on the pavement like a discarded garment. It’s barely recognisable as human, with vicious slashes to the face, indicating extreme hatred on the part of the killer. There are second-degree burns to most of the exposed skin—clearly done pre-mortem—and deep, ragged wounds to the chest and abdomen, the sources of which are still embedded in the flesh, winking up at him through the viscera. It’s shrapnel, quite a lot of it, as if from a bomb.

Sherlock suddenly goes very cold.

When he lifts his head from the body, John is there on the other side of it, grinning as if he’s just told a very good joke. He is wearing the rust-coloured jumper today, and in the dwindling late afternoon light, it is almost precisely the colour of dried blood.

//

The second and third bodies are found together, in the rubble of what used to be the pool. They were killed in exactly the same way as the first and, upon further investigation, were the other two snipers who protected Moriarty.

For a moment, he wonders if Mycroft might be behind this, but no: Mycroft would never be so dramatic about killing, not even when it was done to make a point. So, serial killer, or just a very specific vendetta?

For the first time in his life, Sherlock prefers not to think too deeply about the circumstances behind a murder.

//

The fourth body belongs to one Sebastian Moran, mercenary, hit man, and a favourite of Moriarty’s, having gone so far as to help carry out the logistics of some of his ‘fixes.’

It is around this time that two things happen. First, Lestrade realises (days after Sherlock himself) that Sherlock has no alibi for—or memory of—the nights of the killings, and starts to look at him with something approaching dread. Second, John stays with him all the time. He’s there in their flat, in the light and the dark, when Sherlock closes his eyes. John just looks at him, patient and calm, as though he’s waiting for something. Or someone.

//

The fifth body is Moriarty himself, still grinning in an obscene death rictus and splayed out in what’s left of his Westwood suit. The tiny skulls on his tie are drenched in blood. It’s Mycroft who summons Sherlock to this crime scene, who shows up there himself and searches Sherlock’s face with shuttered, pale eyes before speaking.

“It’s over now, Sherlock. Do please refrain from doing anything rash. John would not have wanted that.”

Sherlock barks out a laugh at this, hoarse and raw. He sees Sally snap her head up at the sound, breaking off her latest argument with Lestrade. Sherlock knows what she’s thinking. He’s not even sure she’s wrong.

John is standing behind her, unnoticed by anyone else. He’s sneering, which is incongruous on him and makes him look more like Sherlock than he would have thought possible. Sherlock suppresses a shudder.

John turns his gaze to him and grins. His eyes crinkle up at the corners. “Serial killers, remember? You love those!”

Sherlock feels slightly nauseated, of a sudden.

John reaches out a hand, and beckons him home.

//

Sherlock waits for days for a sixth body, but none is forthcoming. If the murders _are_ the work of a serial killer, the number six could have symbolic significance; six is considered the number of less-than-perfection, of man as opposed to God (who is represented in 7’s and 3’s), hence 666 as the devil’s number.

Sherlock is still pondering this numerological approach when John coughs once, assertively, from across the room.

“Have you really missed the pattern here, Sherlock?” he says, indulgent and almost fond, so like the old John. “Will you let me help you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock rasps, because he will always let John help him; life is better and his mind is quieter when John helps him.

“Good. Take me through what you’ve got so far.” John settles into his chair, puts his palms on the armrests, and waits for Sherlock to begin.

“The victims are all people who threatened us at the pool that day, directly or indirectly. They were killed in the same manner and left where they could easily be found, suggesting that the killer wanted to make a point, possibly for symbolic reasons, more likely as a show of vengeance. The bodies all showed signs of extensive injury and possible torture before death, and the damage to their faces implies that their murders were deeply personal for the killer, probably either on behalf of himself or someone he loved. The murders escalated from henchmen to Moriarty himself, perhaps as a ranking of the victims’ perceived culpability. I had wondered whether there would be another body, although after the death of Moriarty, I— _oh_.”

Sherlock’s jaw snaps shut with an audible click. He abruptly realises that he’s shaking, just slightly. He must be cold again. Why else would he be shaking, if not from the cold?

John walks over to stand in front of him and tilts Sherlock’s head up. John’s thumb strokes gently across his cheekbone, once, so lightly that Sherlock thinks he might have imagined it.

“Do you see, Sherlock? Do you understand why it has to be this way?”

Sherlock closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth. John’s other hand comes to rest in his hair, stroking, and Sherlock can feel his curls dissolving and reforming around John’s fingers.

“The others, they hurt you,” he gasps out, “but I didn’t save you. I wasn’t clever enough. You trusted me, and I didn’t save you.”

“That’s right,” John says, proud, as if Sherlock had finally been civil to a client. “You let me down. And do you remember what you promised, Sherlock? What you said you’d do for me?”

“Anything, John. I promised you anything, if you’d only come back.”

“So you know what you need to do, then, to keep me. Not just for now, but forever.”

“Yes, John.” He doesn’t feel quite so cold now; it’s the difference between February and March.

“It’ll be quick, I promise,” John soothes. “It doesn’t need to be protracted like with the others. I know that you _tried_ to save me, at least, even if it wasn’t enough.”

“I did, John, I did try, I’m sorry, please believe me—”

“Shh, I know. It’s all right. It’ll be like falling asleep, and when you wake up, I’ll be there. Just one more thing for me, Sherlock, and then it’s done.”

Sherlock drops his head into John’s hands, and releases the breath he’s been holding for so long.

//

When he wakes up, John is waiting for him, as he promised. It’s dark here, wherever they are, and Sherlock’s eyes don’t seem to be adjusting, but he can see John’s, two fairy lights in the Stygian gloom.

Sherlock blinks. “Where are we?”

“It’s a place for people like us,” John says, and Sherlock can hear the smile in his voice.

“John. Why can’t I see you? You promised.” Sherlock knows his voice holds an unwelcome note of desperation, but he feels as though the dark is suffocating him, pressing in from all sides with the weight and nap of velvet.

“I did promise,” John answers, thoughtful, “and I’ve not forgot. But you’ll have to wait a while longer, I’m afraid. Just a little while. And I do need your help, so you’re going to have to follow me. Can you do that, Sherlock? I know where we’re going.”

It’s quite warm here, Sherlock realises, choking down the unreasoning fear in his throat. He won’t be cold anymore, not here. Maybe it’s John’s presence warming him; maybe it’s something else.

“All right, John,” he murmurs, low. “Anywhere.”

He can’t see John grin, but he can sense it. He reaches out a hand for him, but it closes on air.

“Right then, come on, Sherlock. Follow the sound of my voice.” John giggles, then, high and thin and reedy.

Sherlock stills, and listens, and starts walking, following John’s voice into the black until he can figure out what to do. He will not let John down again; he will save him this time. He will.

Even if it takes forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for (implied) major character death, moderate gore, and allusions to suicide.


End file.
